


I Don't Have to Speak

by Chash



Series: My Whole Life I've Been Learning [2]
Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Age Swap, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-01
Updated: 2018-01-01
Packaged: 2019-02-26 11:08:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,425
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13234398
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Chash/pseuds/Chash
Summary: After Mount Weather, Clarke needs to leave, and Bellamy needs to go with her. They've been apart long enough recently, as far as he's concerned.





	I Don't Have to Speak

**Author's Note:**

> Fill for [islandoforder](http://islandoforder.tumblr.com/)!

The walk back from Mount Weather is long and quiet. The silence isn’t just his and Clarke’s, but it feels heaviest from them, at least to him. It’s not either of their first kills, not even close, but there’s a weight to it that’s new and unfamiliar. They didn’t pull that lever in the heat of battle, not really. It was to survive in a more abstract sense, to save their people, but still not–

There were  _children_  in there. And some part of him understood, couldn’t help relating to what they were going through. He spent his life dreaming of escape too, being able to see a whole world and not get to it. He might have even spent his childhood slowly killing people, by inches, with the oxygen he was using to live.

But he wouldn’t have killed someone to take their place. He wouldn’t have taken another life he thought of as less than his, drained their blood and put it in himself to get out. To stay alive, maybe, but–they  _were_  alive. That’s what gets him. It wasn’t about survival, it was about wanting more.

Clarke lets out a shuddering breath, and he moves closer to her, automatic. They’ve been apart more than they’ve been together, these last few weeks, and it’s been hard on him. He doesn’t like not knowing where Clarke is, doesn’t like wondering if she’s alive, wondering if he’ll ever see her again.

“We did the right thing,” he tells her, and she makes a soft sound, the most heartbreaking laugh he’s ever heard.

“Did we?”

“Maybe not,” he grants. “But we did the only thing we could.”

“There were more of them than there were of us. By the numbers, their survival made more sense than ours. And it’s not like we haven’t done terrible things too.”

“What do you think they would have done?” he asks. “Once they’d killed us and taken what they needed, they would have left the mountain and gone out into the world. They were winning the war with the grounders before they could even breathe out here, what do you think would have happened once they wanted their land?”

“My mom said there are no good guys,” she says. “Not them, but not us either.”

“Maybe not. We can still be the best we can. And–we didn’t have a better option, once we lost our army.”

“I guess not,” she says, and they fall back into silence.

Octavia comes to check on him after, putting her arm around her like she did when they were kids, for all he’s taller than she is now.

“You did good, Bell.”

“I did something,” he says. “I did what I had to do.”

“ _Good_ ,” she says, insistent. “You saw what they did to Lincoln. What they were going to do to us.”

“That wasn’t all of them. I wouldn’t want anyone to judge me for the worst things the Ark did. We wouldn’t deserve to live any more than they did.”

“You deserve to live, Bell. You can’t–it’s not about stacking up sins and deciding who has the fewest. Everyone deserves to be alive, and it sucks that not everyone could be. It sucks that some assholes gave you no choice but to kill innocent people. But we deserved to live just as much as they did.”

“So no matter what I did, it would have been good.”

“And bad. But I’m alive, so obviously that was the best choice.”

He laughs, leans his head on hers. He was sure she wouldn’t make it down with the Ark, and sometimes he still can’t believe she did. Sometimes, he still expects to wake up alone, no Clarke, no Octavia, no one. Just himself in a box in the floor of a dying space station.

“Obviously,” he says. “Thanks.”

*

When they get back to Camp Jaha, he and Octavia place themselves at either side of the gates, making sure they didn’t lose anyone, and Clarke waits outside, he assumes checking the same thing.

Except once everyone’s in, she doesn’t come, just watches the gate, her expression wistful.

He realizes it all at once, understands with horrible certainty that she’s not planning to come back.

“Go inside,” he tells his sister. “I’ve got this.”

“Bell–”

“Don’t worry,” he says. “We’ll be fine.”

Her jaw works for a moment, but she finally just nods. “If you don’t come back, I’m going to find you and kill you.”

“If we don’t come back, we’re probably already dead. Save yourself the trouble.” He puts his arm around her and kisses her temple. “Don’t worry. We’ll come back.”

“I can’t believe you’re leaving me for  _Clarke Griffin_ ,” she teases, and he has to smile.

“Yeah, I can’t believe it either. Tell her mom what happened, once she’s feeling better.” He saw Clarke squeeze Abby’s hand, murmur something, so she probably knows Clarke is going. But he thinks it’ll make her feel better, that he’s going too, that she won’t be alone. “Take care of everyone.”

“Come back soon.”

Clarke is watching him a little warily, probably trying to make up her mind what he’s going to do.

He doesn’t stop, just keeps walking past her. “Did you have somewhere we were going?”

“Bellamy–”

“What?”

“You don’t–” she starts, but thinks better of it. “This is something  _I_  need to do. And I need you to take care of everyone.”

“Fuck that,” he says. “There are hundreds of them and one of you. You need someone taking care of you more than they do. Are you coming or what?” he adds. “I’m just going to start walking if you don’t have a better plan.”

It takes another second, but she falls into step with him, jaw set. “I was going to go alone,” she finally says.

“I got that, yeah. I’ve never had a best friend before,” he tells her, for all it seems inadequate. She is his best friend, that’s for certain, but she’s so much more than that too. “I’m not going to let anything happen to you. Together,” he adds, gentle. “Like I said.”

“Together,” she repeats. “Let’s go.”

*

“Lexa kissed me,” she admits, soft.

It’s been two days since they left, and they’ve been quiet days. In many ways, it reminds him of those first days on the ground, no homes, no resources, no adults, not even any grounders. Just him and Clarke against the world.

He’s not sure what to make of this as her first conversation starter, so he just says, “Yeah?”

“I wouldn’t have minded, if–if things were different.”

He shifts closer. “What things?”

“She killed Finn,” she says. “And–I get why, I do. What he did–there had to be consequences. And she taught me a lot of things. But–she left. She knew what Mount Weather was, she knew what they were going to do, and she decided she could trust a deal with them. And I don’t–I don’t get it.”

“I don’t either,” he admits. “It’s okay to still–” He swallows. “You care about her. You can’t just turn that off, even if it’s not–convenient.”

“Convenient,” she says, with a huff of laughter. “I don’t know if I could ever forgive her. And even if I could, I don’t know–I don’t think it would have worked between us.”

“No?”

“She has her people and I have mine. It would be nice not to care, but I think we’d always know.” She shifts closer. “And she’s not–I don’t think we understand each other.”

“You could learn,” he says. “If that’s what you want.”

“I know.” She puts her head on his chest, the first time they’ve slept like this since before the explosion at the dropship, before they were separated that first time. They spent weeks trying to make it back to each other, but when they did, it was too strange, too awkward. There was too much going on.

The relief of having her close again is so profound it feels like a physical weight lifting off of him.

“Is this okay?” she asks, soft, and he puts his arm around her.

“Yeah. This is fine.”

*

“What’s your favorite color?” he asks the next day.

Clarke turns, raising her eyebrows. “What?”

“Your favorite color.”

She thinks about it. “You know how sometimes, when you look up, you can see the sun coming down and lighting up the leaves? That shade of green.”

“Favorite food?”

“Why are you asking?”

“Because I don’t know,” he says, with a shrug. “We don’t get a lot of chances to chat. I should know this stuff, right?”

She smiles. “Did you ever get to eat spaghetti on the Ark?”

“I don’t think so.”

She nods. “I think it wouldn’t be that hard to make here, if we ever really settled in. It was a lot of trouble, so we didn’t have it very often, but I really liked it.”

“I don’t even know what it is.”

“Noodles,” she says. “Flour and egg, mostly. My dad used to make it with red sauce for my birthday.” She glances at him. “What did you eat?”

“Ration bars, mostly. My mom couldn’t afford much by way of luxury stuff, and even if she could, she couldn’t get enough for me. So when we had special meals, we never had enough to go around.” He smiles. “Sorry, not really a fun conversation.”

“Is your favorite color depressing too?” she teases.

“It’s blue.”

“What kind of blue?”

If he were a different person, he’d say  _the color of your eyes_ , but if he was a different person, he would have kissed her, like Lexa did. But he doesn’t know how to be like that. All he can be is himself.

“Like the sky,” he says, and she laughs, soft, but bright and clear.

“I guess it makes sense. That so many of our favorite things are on the ground.”

He swallows hard, doesn’t let himself look at her. “Yeah, I guess it does.”

*

“What do you want to do?”

At the moment, all he really wants to do is finish cooking the rabbit they caught for dinner so they can eat it, but the question seems larger than that. “When?”

“For the rest of your life.”

“Not sure how long that’s going to be.”

“You know what I mean. If we stopped fighting, just had lives down here, what would you want?”

He thinks it over carefully, watching the rabbit on the fire. “I wouldn’t want to fight anymore. Fuck, I wouldn’t even want to hunt, let someone else do it. I might like to be a teacher, if we needed those.”

“Yeah?”

“Or farming, that would be cool too. And I’d still want–I’d need to be some kind of leader, I guess. I don’t think I could just stop having opinions.”

She smiles. “Definitely not.”

“What about you? Doctor?”

“I don’t know. If we have other people to do it, I’d let them.” She worries her lip. “I’d like to build something new. Houses. I don’t know a lot about architecture, but I could try designing buildings.”

“For Camp Jaha?” he asks.

They haven’t talked about going back, haven’t even mentioned it. But he can’t imagine they won’t. Clarke needs time to herself now, but she won’t forever.

“Or whatever we call it when it’s a real settlement, yeah.” She bites her lip. “I’m not planning to live in the woods for the rest of my life. And you can–if you want to go back.”

“I want to be with you,” he says, without thinking. It’s true, but more than he meant to say. A lot of truth.

“Good. I want you here.”

He clears his throat. “Good to know. Ready for dinner?”

Her smile is so soft, he can’t stand to look at her. “Yeah, that sounds good.”

*

It’s been thirty-nine days when she kisses him.

There isn’t any special reason he can come up with. It’s an ordinary morning, and he wakes up with her already up, but not out of their sleeping pack yet. She’s drawing idle patterns on his side with one finger, and he yawns.

“Nothing better to do this morning?”

She smiles. “Definitely not.”

And then she kisses him.

He still hasn’t kissed very many people, still doesn’t feel as if he’s very good at it, but he fumbles, gets his hand into her hair to draw her closer, to make sure he’s kissing her back, making his interest clear if inept. She smiles against his mouth, pushing him flat on his back, positioning herself on top of him and taking control of the kiss. He makes a soft noise in the back of his throat, half pleasure and half desperation, sliding his free hand up under her shirt to touch skin, and she laughs, pulls back to grin at him so widely he can’t even be upset they aren’t kissing anymore.

“So, that’s okay,” she teases.

He strokes her hair away from her face, kisses her again, soft. “I was going to do it sooner or later.”

“I wanted sooner.” Her eyes flick over him, like she’s checking to make sure he’s really there, that this is real. He can understand the impulse. “Thank you,” she says. “For coming with me. I don’t think I ever said that. I’m really glad you’re here.”

“I wouldn’t be anywhere else.”

“I know,” she says, and leans back down to kiss him again.

They don’t manage to find breakfast for a while after that, but Bellamy doesn’t mind in the least.

*

“I shouldn’t be nervous, right?” Clarke asks.

Bellamy squeezes her hand. Camp Jaha has grown, looks more like a real village and less like a collection of scrap metal than it did two months ago. He can see Miller on the wall, looking bored as he scans the horizon. His gun is down, so he’s not really worried they’re going to get shot or anything.

“Depends what you’re nervous about.”

“We left them.”

“I think we’d earned a break.”

“Everyone did. Not everyone took one.”

“Yeah, well, we killed more people than they did.”

She lets out a soft snort of laughter. “That’s what you’re going to tell them?”

“I think they’re going to be happy we’re home. And I think they’ll understand why we left.” He takes her hand and squeezes. “And it’s definitely not going to get better if we just wait, so–ready?”

“Ready.”

“Together,” he says, and she smiles.

“Together.”


End file.
